


Between Friends

by july_19th_club



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 'mama' by my chemical romance plays in the background, Character Un-death, Gen, but i respect mr keay's happiness and safety just that tiny bit more, mr jonnysims i respect your vision and your plan, or something, post-canon/canon divergent, this is a gerry keay defense house, wahey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 04:02:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21469756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/july_19th_club/pseuds/july_19th_club
Summary: Jon learns a new trick, and visits an old friend.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 352





	Between Friends

**Author's Note:**

> It's bonkers that in just half an hour of monologuing Gerry managed to fully consume my TMA experience like that, but sometimes these things happen, you know? Anyway I think he deserves good things and I took a break from NaNoWriMo to write an entire 7k fic about him. It's mostly people having conversations in different locations, but what are podcasts when you really get down to it? I've done my best to extrapolate a logical next point for the Eyepocalypse, but as I haven't *actually* finished the podcast yet and I only know about it because I'm impatient and crave spoiling, any weird bits are entirely due to my not knowing what the fuck is going on.

This week’s hideout is a petrol station, or rather more accurately, the storeroom/basement of said petrol station, abandoned some time ago when people stopped wanting to drive places alone, to be out on the roads under watch like that. They’ve taken what they can without qualms. Gave those up weeks ago, qualms, Martin will say cheerfully as he sorts packets of instant noodles. Last night they tried making one of those frozen pizzas, but it didn’t work out so well over the open flame and most of the cheese wound up spilling off and into the fire. Neither of them have really been much for outdoorsy stuff before now, and Jon finds the learning curve is considerably steeper than that for, say, adopting the surveillance-based superpowers afforded by one’s demon parasite. 

Still, they muddle on. They even make phone calls these days, on occasion. Usually to old allies, just to let them know they’re safe. Things don’t seem much different elsewhere, going by the others’ reports: chaos, but a very quiet kind, because people seem to think that if they’re quiet it won’t See them. Wrong, of course. He doesn’t sleep much at all these days. Tries, because Martin makes him, but he drifts between other minds and never fully rests. 

It’s this knowledge, the understanding that no matter what, things will be Seen, that allows them to do things like make phone calls. It isn’t, after all, as if it can get much worse. They still try to be very careful, never staying in one place for too long, using phones that aren’t their own when possible, only calling people who they’re sure can take care of themselves. The fact is that Jon knows (and Knows) that he’s _ not _the most powerful avatar of the Eye. People can still be hurt to hurt him. So they try to limit the contact. 

Tomorrow they’ll move on again. Their things are already mostly packed, sans their camp stove, their dinner, and their bedrolls. Martin’s stocked back up on tea supplies, although he’s been disappointed in the quality. A month ago he’d come across a really nice Irish tea, and he’d tried to ration it, but they’d liked it too much to be frugal with it. Now they’re back to Tetley, which Martin ordinarily scoffs at. He swirls his thermos around now and looks up at Jon. “What’s on your mind?”

It pulls him out of a reverie, the question. “That thing I did last week,” he says. “The, uh...” It’s a new trick, he thinks. He’s been calling it far-Seeing in his head, but he doesn’t want to get too excited about a new skill before he’s figured out its downsides. There’ve got to be downsides. 

“You sort of went away, huh?” Martin’s developed a special voice for these kinds of discussions, a gentle and patient one that deliberately doesn’t judge or show fear. He appreciates it more than he can say. 

“Yeah, that.”

“What...about it?” Now Martin’s using the voice he uses when he’s curious about some aspect of the Beholding but is trying not to act too much like it, out of his usual overabundance of caution. It pitches his regular tone up a little bit, sounds almost...you could say ‘coy’. It’s rather - rather _ cute _, even in situations like these. “You’re going to try it on purpose?”

“Maybe,” he admits. 

“Well. No time like the present,” Martin says, putting down his thermos, his face going businesslike. “Right?”

“Maybe wrong,” Jon says out of habit, but Martin’s correct as usual, really. It’s always a bad time, for everything, so why not test it out? The sooner he gets used to each new twist, the sooner he can use those powers to...to...well, he’s not sure what, exactly, but life is always harder when he doesn’t know what’s happening inside him. It’s been a lot of work learning that, and he’s still not quite there. But treating his powers like something to study helps to keep him from panicking about them, anyway.

“What happened, when you...you know, went away, anyhow?” Martin asks. “You said you saw things that...”

“I saw - well, I told you, scenes. Events. I could - I could hear them; it was like I was there, it just wasn’t...now.” This is still the closest he can come to explaining it, which isn’t great. 

“Past? Future?”

“Past, I think,” he says. “I was walking around in a city center mostly. Just looking around. Recent past, I’m pretty sure. No floating observatory.” He manages a laugh. “Completely unwatched. One with the crowd.”

“Sounds nice,” Martin says. A slow, distant smile crosses his face. Jon knows he still feels a bit...lonely, sometimes. Longs for the separation. He’d never seek it forever, not while the two of them are together and alive. But on quiet nights Jon worries that if something were to happen to him, something _ more _, he means...well. He just won’t let it. 

“What did it look like from your end?” Jon asks, mostly to distract Martin from his own fog. 

He seems to come back a bit with a start. “Um, yes! Yeah. Mostly...well, bit like a trance, really. You went real still, and I couldn’t get you to talk...freaked me out, actually, you just sort of sat there. Saw your mouth move a few times, I think you must have been talking to yourself. Figured I just had to wait for it to be over. And once or twice your eyes looked around, just. Not at..._ here _.”

He looks a bit freaked out recollecting it, and Jon reaches for his hand. 

“You remember coming back?” Martin asks, his palm warm against Jon’s fingers. 

“Bit. Where I was, it was, it was sunny. And I remember it getting dark in the sky and then - back with you.” None of it was too clear, actually, but maybe with practice it will be. _ Practice _. He hates that it’s all become so commonplace. Even the Eye that sent him spiralling into the depths of breaking panic has become just another feature of the landscape. After a certain point, you adapt.

“Sure you want to try again?”

“It wasn’t bad, really,” he says, and this is true, but then that time wasn’t very long, either. 

“Got anywhere in particular you’re aiming for?”

He doesn’t. “Do you think I should?”

“Try to - here, just try a street back home. Make it easy on yourself. If you’re going to do this, pick a _ very _ simple time and place and take a _ quick _look. Then back with me.”

Simple. Right. Each time he uses these, these aspects of the power, they seem to be more organic, more complicated to control and less - well, he would say less alien, but instead what seems to be happening lately is that they’re conforming to _ him _, rather than the other way around. He’s not sure that’s better. 

So he sits down cross-legged on his bedroll and Martin sits across from him. He picks a street three over from the Institute, one he walks down every morning on his commute. _ Walked _ down. He picks it at random, or so it seems as he does it, but maybe something in the Knowing has a destination in mind after all, because when the storeroom and Martin’s anxious, waiting face fall away and the bustle of a crowded London sidewalk comes into view, he’s several streets south of where he’s been picturing in his mind, and the sky is overcast, perhaps even a bit drizzly, when he’d been aiming again for sun. 

The first thing he sees is the man in front of him: young, late twenties perhaps, punkish. Large boots, a black leather jacket that’s seen better days. Those plastic earrings that widen out holes, what-are-they-calleds, gauges. An assortment of accessories: cuff bracelet, some kind of pendant, an eyebrow piercing. Hair: longish, half-tied back and a bit unwashed-looking, black from a box. The young man is extremely grey about the face, washed-out looking. Shadows under his eyes. They stare at each other for a very long moment. 

The second thing he sees is Gerry Keay blink, take half a faltering step forward, and faint. 

***

The fall takes him forward as well, and on reflex Jon steps in to close the gap. It’s only when he actually catches Keay that he realizes he’s capable of it. He has a_ form _ here, in whatever...vision-world this is. Gerry’s heavier than he’d expect for that wiry frame, and he wonders if he’s already ill. That was what got the guy, in the end. Didn’t find out what was wrong until it was too late. Spent his time chasing Gertrude’s leads instead. He bends his knees carefully and lowers them both toward the ground. A small crowd is gathering, and someone gets a phone out to call 999, but before they can, Gerry shudders and opens his eyes. 

“Ah, god,” Jon hears him mutter. He lifts his head off of Jon’s shoulder and focuses in on the woman with the phone out. “C’mon, please don’t.”

“You sure?” she asks. 

He tries to sit, elbows pushing sharply into Jon. “Yeah.” His voice is faint but insistent. “Don’t worry about it.” 

“All right,” she says, but she still looks skeptical. Jon mouths, _ I’ve got him _, and she shrugs and finally the crowd begins to move on. Gerry is still struggling to get up, but his limbs are too weak and shaky and so instead he props himself against the brick wall of the building behind them. He puts his head down on his knees and Jon, without thinking about it, begins to rub his back awkwardly. 

After a minute of this, Gerry turns to look at him. He’s still pale, but his voice is stronger and somehow even more sarcastic than normal when he speaks. “Who’re you?”

“Has this happened before?” he asks. He knows he should probably be doing something with the fact that he can interact with the world while he’s..._ far-Seeing _...He should probably be asking more pertinent questions. But instead he says, “Gerry? Have you ever...?”

“Hang on, how do you - I _ don’t _ know you, do I? Like, we’re strangers, yeah?”

“What? Sorry, I-” 

Gerry waves a shaky hand in front of him, cutting off his stuttering. “Do. I. Know. You.” 

Jon sighs. “Not yet.”

“What’s _ that _ supposed to mean?” 

“Nothing, it’s not supposed to mean anything, I just want...” What does he want? “I want to know if anything like this has happened before.”

“Sorry, what do you care?” Gerry runs a hand over his head until it reaches his hair tie, which he fiddles with.

“I’m just asking.” This time he puts a little bit of the old compel into it; he’s been trying not to, but it’s just so much quicker and he hasn’t needed a direct question for it to work for a while. 

“Not really,” Gerry says quickly, only half-consciously. “Nah, been dizzy a bit before, you know, it happens. Been working a lot, yeah? Late nights. Missed sleep. Never...yeah, never come over faint before, though. No. Gets hot out, you know? Things happen.” He shrugs, blinks as if he’s coming to the realization that _ something _ about his having answered the question isn’t right. Jon notes in the silence that it isn’t a hot day. The air is full of that faint, gritty not-mist that only London can truly produce, and it clings, clammy, to their skin. 

The compel penny drops and Gerry sits up straighter. “Hang on, you just...”

“You should really see someone about that, you know. Before it’s serious. If it’s not already.” 

“I’m fine,” he says. He stands up, and Jon follows, hovering at Gerry’s elbow in a way that he realizes belatedly must make him look like Martin. 

“You really won’t be.” 

“Again I ask, what’s it to you?”

“Just...a concerned party, I suppose,” he manages. It’s a lame excuse and Gerry’s a smart guy, he knows he’ll see right through it. He’s already clocked that Jon can do something only archivists can do. 

“You know something I don’t know?”

They’re walking now, slowly, and as they pass a store window he catches their reflections in the glass. More accurately, he catches Gerry’s reflection. His own is that of a shorter man, older too, late middle age, and white. He’s here, all right, but he’s touching the past through someone else’s hands. “I just think that you...” But how can it be said? _ You won’t know you’re sick until you’ve been dying for months? You’ll collapse in a city far away from home and the only person to mark your passing will be one who perhaps helped you to your death, kept you pushing yourself long after it was safe? Bound you by the skin of your back until you begged me to burn what was left of you? _ It cannot be said. It’s done. Gerry’s done. 

Gerry, who doesn’t yet know that he’s done, is scowling at him. “Something’s going to happen, is it? Something that applies to me? Hey! Hey, answer me, mate...”

And then just as suddenly as it dropped into view, the street fades. Gerry Keay’s pinched features, ranting at him, disappears, and Martin’s take its place. A closeup of his glasses, his curly hair, his knit eyebrows. He feels himself pitching toward Martin, braces one hand on the floor just in time. He’s breathing hard. He definitely feels, this time, as if he’s _ come back _ from somewhere. 

“What happened?” Martin’s fussing, helping him sit back again, brushing him down despite there being no more dust than there was five minutes ago. He Knows he wasn’t gone long. 

“I could...I could touch things. I was, I was in someone...I saw...”

“Saw what?” 

“I could touch things, I could...I’m going...” He’s going back, and he’s doing it now. He’s not sure, at the moment, whether it’s a decision _ he’s _ making, or a decision that’s being made _ for _ him. But he closes his eyes, feels Martin’s hand on his arm like an anchor, and lands in sunlight for the second time. A park, somewhere quieter in the city. London, he Knows this. The when doesn’t present itself immediately. 

He doesn’t quite recognize Gerry Keay at first, because his hair’s not black. It’s barely buzzcut length and appears in its natural state to be the sort of mild color that can’t decide if it’s blonde or brown. He’s even thinner, somehow, bundled up in a hoodie and jacket despite the fact that (Jon looks around, takes a bit of stock) it appears to be late summer, the leaves brilliantly green against the grey of the buildings beyond. The sharp angles of his face are the same, though, and the piercings seem to be in the same places, so Jon thinks he can safely say this is indeed his Gerard Keay. They’re sitting on adjacent benches, and he does not know what kind of body he’s wearing but it appears to be young, or at the very least short enough that he has to look up at everyone who passes.

Gerry turns, sees him, and Jon notes the edge of a thick scar beneath the short crop of hair that curves down toward his right ear. With the giant boots and the abundant tattoos, it only serves to make him look more hardcore.

“You again,” he says, laconic. 

“Me who?” Jon asks. He’s never been very good at playing it cool, but he tries anyway.

“You, from the street. While back? I had a dizzy spell, you sat there with me. We talked. You knew my _ name _.”

“I...”

“There’s no use playing dumb, I know it’s you, yeah?” 

“But I look different,” Jon hears himself say, as if that means anything when powers are concerned. His voice sounds different too, and he thinks he might be a kid right now. 

“Big deal. I dunno. I know it’s you, though. Something about your eyes.”

_ Ah _. “Figures.” 

“You get that one from _ Game of Thrones _?” 

“What?” Even before all of the apocalypses, he was never good at keeping up with popular culture. He’d get into a thing only to discover that it had been cool five years ago, and he was breaking in on the tail end of the fad. He had tried to read the books, but he’d never been able to line them up right with his tendency to hyperfocus, and without that they were impossibly long. 

“You - there’s the thing the guy does, he sends his mind out from his body, yeah? Puts it into other bodies so he can see what they saw? That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

Jon shrugs. “I've - I've never seen it.”

“Okay. Just thought I had a decent analogy there, that’s all.” He shrugs, almost cheerfully. Jon finds it hard to reconcile this Gerry with the one who’d lived in his head for so many years - a mysterious figure in a dark coat, morally questionable. Then the ghost, so resigned. 

He can still picture the first time - the last time, too - that he actually saw Gerard Keay, in person. A state park somewhere to the west of the United States capitol, late, late in the night. He had read a horrible little passage from a book once owned by Mary Keay, whose son’s life was, ironically, one of the few whose ties to it she herself hadn’t caused. All of the things he’d read by then, and the short death of Gerard Keay was the worst. He hadn’t drifted out of those brutal words, as you’d expect a ghost to. He’d just _been there_. He’d been solid enough, even looked a bit cold to Jon at the time, barefoot as he’d been and dressed only in the hospital gown he’d died in. He’d fiddled a lot with his hands and wrists, Jon remembered, while he’d talked, as if he was looking for rings and bracelets that weren’t with him anymore. He had seemed almost living. But his voice had echoed strangely the longer he spoke. He’d insisted Jon rip up his page before they even got started talking. He’d wanted to be gone, it was the best option left to him, but when you were talking about being a page in a book of the dead whose occupants’ only activities were answering the questions of the living and suffering wracking pain, the word ‘option’ must take on a different kind of significance.

He’d done it, of course. Ripped the page. Later burnt it, so that it could not be repaired or read again. It wasn’t easy, and he hadn’t expected it to be. He’d been hungry to know. But he had promised. He hadn’t seen anything as the burning had gone on, he’d Known at the time that Gerry was already elsewhere, or at least, _ not there _. He’d lit himself a cigarette from the flames, though. It had seemed like the kind of thing he ought to do. 

He searches now for something to say for this Gerard, the mousy one on the bench in the sun. “So...how are you?” 

“I’m good,” Gerry says without thinking, “I - _ stop _ that shit.” 

This isn’t going to be easy, is it? “Can I ask you a strange question, just one, and you answer it? I’m just trying to piece some things together, so. Please.” He won’t have a choice, but Jon_ wants _to at least offer one, for all the good it ever does. 

“Have I got a choice?” The guy is _ prescient _. “Yeah, go ahead.” 

“How long has it been since I last saw you?” 

Gerry pushes a breath slowly out. “Give or take...about a year and a half? Been in treatment, most of it. Just kind of went by in a blur, yeah.” 

Jon feels something bloom up inside his chest, a feeling almost of triumph. He remembers distinctly that Gerry had never gotten any kind of real treatment, had spent his last and sickest days working with Gertrude. “So you took my advice, then?”

Gerry looks affronted. “Took your adv- took your- I didn’t _ take your advice _ ,” he snaps. “I don’t even _ know _ you.”

“So then...what...?” 

“Nuh-uh,” he says. “I’ll play your game, yeah? But you gotta answer some questions too.”

Jon nods. He supposes it’s the least he can do. 

“You’re from the future, yeah?” 

“Uhhhhhh...” Really, what good was budding omniscience if it didn’t let him predict questions like _ that? _

“Come _ on _, it’s not that big of a leap. I had that one figured out as soon as you left. Didn’t know any of the powers could do that,” he adds conversationally. “Mind if I ask the particulars?” 

“I’m sure you have your suspicions,” Jon says darkly.

Gerry grins. He’s got one foot propped up now and is lacing and unlacing his boot over and over again. That’s another thing that strikes Jon as being unlike the Gerard he’d built up in his head. His imaginary Gerard Keay did not fidget. Was impassive. Impressive. Was always in charge and knew too much, filtered through the statements of others. “Your turn.”

There are too many questions, but finally he settles on one that might cover things. “You said you didn’t take my advice. So what did you do?”

“Went to a doctor.” 

“But you just said you -”

“Not because _ you _ told me to do anything.” Gerry waves the idea away casually. “But you did say some weird stuff, and the way you talked I reckoned there was a decent chance I was dead where you were from. And...what? I kick it just after I’ve managed to start my own life a bit, leave that house behind? Do things my way? What kind of bullshit karma is that? Who gets the last laugh then? Not me, I'll tell you. I thought, _ I’ll bet she’d love the irony _ . And I’d be damned if I’d let her have that too. So I figured I _ could _ go in, and if there was nothing wrong, no harm done.” His voice goes quieter. “Got lucky, I suppose. It was...by the time you start having symptoms it’s often too...they said if I’d even given it another couple months. But I didn’t.” 

“So you’re...all right then?”

Gerry rubs a hand over his bristly cut as if he’s looking for his hair tie again. “Will be,” he says. “So they say. Gertrude’s been impatient, I can tell you that. Been too out of it to help her much, but she’s gonna need me again soon. Planning a trip next spring to...wait, it’s my turn. How well do you know Gertrude and me? You work with us? How far forward are you?” 

“That’s more than one question,” Jon observes. Obviously he can’t be completely honest with his answers, but Gerry deserves at least a little bit of truth. “Let’s see...well enough that I know why she went to America, but not well enough for her to entrust me with all the details.”

“Well, that could be anyone she knows,” Gerry says. 

“Yes, I suppose. Do I work with you? A bit. Not often in person. But your research has been invaluable. And if it’s...” he does some quick mental math. “If it’s 2013, then three years or so.”

“Wild,” Gerry says flatly, looking as if he doesn’t find this remotely wild. 

“Are you sure you’ll be up for America?” Jon says. He doesn’t want to give him too many hints, he knows that shouldn’t be how it’s done. It’s time travel, everyone knows you can’t give hints. But he’s gotten this far...

“Yeah,” Gerry says firmly. “Look, this thing is in remission. She and I have a partnership. And I need to_ do _ something with myself, yeah? This is what I know.”

_ And you’re sure it’s not just a repeat of the old days? That Gertrude hasn’t just replaced Mary in all but the details? _But that’s not his to work out. He should let this go before he digs himself in too deep. He gets up from his bench, makes for the path that leads across the park and into the city, but Gerry stops him. “Hey. One thing.”

He turns. “Yes?”

“I’ll tell you how I knew where you were from.”

He almost dreads the answer, but he waits. 

“No one here calls me Gerry. Always thought a nickname’d be nice, you know. Guess it’ll finally stick sometime, eh?” He shrugs and gets up, shoving his hands into his pockets. “See you around, yeah?” 

“I hope so,” Jon says, and he reaches for home.

***

He doesn’t land with Martin. 

The hallway is bright, loud in a distant way, as if a lot of activity is happening, but none of it in his immediate vicinity. A metallic scent, and when he focuses again, he sees Gertrude Robinson herself. _ The woman, the myth, the legend _ . He steps back quickly, finds a wall corner and ducks behind it. She’s wearing glasses, an old knit sweater, clutches a beat-up leather purse to her chest as if it’s protecting her, generally gives off the impression of a woman out of her depth. She’s being talked at by a tall man with an American accent; white coat. Phrases drift back to Jon’s hiding place. ... _ cause a seizure...insurance...next step will be...weakened immune system _...

Pittsburgh. He doesn’t need to Know to have this one figured out. He should have guessed, really, he thinks, he’s not the world’s most observant guy but everyone knows that time travel never works the way you want it to. Things stay in place. Events happen the way they happen, and your adjustments are never more than just a momentary detour. 

He closes his eyes and takes a moment to think. Of course, it would always have had to happen this way, wouldn’t it? How else would he have gotten the book? Met the ghost? He wouldn’t even know about the powers if it weren’t for Gerry’s help. Or he’d have learned about them far too late. This day, he realizes, is intrinsic to his own life, it cannot change without his past changing. Without stopping his fight against the Unknowing. Without doing the little good his life in its chaos has possibly managed to do. He sinks to his knees in the little supply room he’s found himself in, and waits there a long moment before standing back up. He’s in scrubs, it looks like, pale blue ones, and boxy orthopaedic shoes for long shifts. He spots a cart stacked nearly full with trays; juice, cups of brightly colored gelatin. He takes one and holds it like a shield as he walks out into the hallway. He can’t talk to Gertrude, that would be risking far too much and he knows it, but maybe he can get closer. She’s still talking, and he finds himself slowing to a halt as he makes out her side of the conversation.

She doesn’t seem too upset, although with Gertrude that doesn’t always bode so well. This is, after all, the woman who sent Michael Shelley into the Spiral knowing exactly what it would do to him. Jon hasn’t reckoned for a while that she’s much of a one for sentimentality. Except that, as he listens in, it seems as if she really, really is. _ My son, _ she’s saying, _ well, you wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you, but he’s just got the bug, the itch for adventure, always has. Loves the hiking. Still recovering, my goodness I know, but well I just couldn’t dissuade him, so I had to come too, had his heart set on the Appalachian trail, didn’t he? And what with his health, well, we just thought we’d do something together for once, well we had such a scare last year, didn’t we, cancer, my god, you never think about it in one so young, he’s just luckier than anything, isn’t he, well, I barely saw him for months, and do you know what I’m doing now... _ She’s spinning an absolutely massive load of blarney, is what she’s doing. As she blathers on, Jon wonders briefly if this gift too is something that comes with the power, but no. No, this right here seems to be a Robinson special. He finds himself smiling in spite of the confusion. Gertrude washes over the doctor with a wave of good-natured babble and he stands frozen in his tracks, interrupting with remarkable patience to insert comments she blithely ignores about watching one’s level of activity during these delicate stages of recovery. 

So Jon turns and, taking advantage of Gertrude’s cheerful bullshitting and the doctor’s resulting stupor, enters the room. Gerry’s there, sitting in bed calmly reading a cooking magazine and drinking a glass of apple juice. “Got one already,” he says as he spots Jon’s tray out of the corner of his eye. Then he looks up. 

“Back again?” He puts the glass down and marks his page before he tosses the magazine aside.

“You’re...still here.”

“Yup.” He makes clicking noise with his tongue, impatient. “So are you. What, are you just going to stalk me until we meet up for real?”

“I...I don’t...I don’t understand, you’re here, you’re...what happened?”

He doesn’t answer the question. Jon can see the twitch in his face that says he feels the urge to, the pull, but it fades. Perhaps Jon hasn’t put his usual effort in, because when Gerry speaks, it’s just to say, “You’ve got an American accent, you know that?”

“What?” Certainly this isn’t want he’s expected to hear. It must be the body, unintended side effect...“I...I don’t, do I...oh, God, that is weird.” 

“What do you mean ‘what happened,’ you mean recently or in general?”

“You’re. This is what happened, isn’t it? You’re in hospital. In Pittsburgh.” 

“Yup.” Gerry raises his eyebrow, the one with the ring. He’s dyed his hair back to its normal too-saturated black, and it’s growing out now, at the stage where his bangs are too long and falling in his eyes. Or perhaps that’s intentional. “Why, what happens in Pittsburgh in your past that’s not happening right now? And don’t screw me around, yeah, just be honest.”

He has to speak slowly. It’s shifting, his Knowledge, things falling out of place and other things moving forward to fill the gaps. His own trip to America, clue-hunting. He’d stopped at this very building but hadn’t gone further than the front desk to ask after...to ask about Gerard Keay, who’d been admitted, who’d. Well. “In my recollection,” he says carefully, as it moves away from his tongue when he tries to pin it down, “you died in Pittsburgh. Here. It had caught up with you. Massive seizure. Gertrude...” _ Gertrude added you to the book. _ Maybe it’s best not to share that bit right now. 

“Really?” He sounds only mildly interested, but there’s a stiffening to his frame that betrays exactly how unsettled he is by what Jon’s said. “Had a mild one,” he admits. His voice is distant, and if Jon didn’t know him better he’d say a bit scared. “They said, dehydration. Not eating right...It hasn’t come back, they checked,” he adds. “Just...need to take more care.” He lets out a huge breath. “You’re serious? I die?”

“Apparently not,” Jon says. He feels exhausted himself all of a sudden. He sits down on the end of the bed, and Gerry doesn’t tell him not to. “I don’t know what that means. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen to you. I don’t.” _ Oh. That’s what feels so bad _. “I don’t Know.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, mate,” says Gerry, “but that’s _ normal _.”

“Not for me.”

“Yeah, you and Gertrude both. Look, we’re not going to be in the country much longer anyway. Couple more stops, that’s it. Loads to do back home.” 

“Like what?”

He just shrugs. “You think I get told that? Listen, it’s a partnership yeah, but not _ that _ kind of partnership.”

“Good old Gertrude.”

“You got two out of three right there.” 

They both laugh. He doesn’t know what happens next. He ought to be coming home, ought to be looking for Martin, he’s realized the downside now and the idea of becoming lost in scattered people, scattered times - or worse, tagging along after Gerry and Gertrude forever - there’s got to be something he’s missing. Something that ties it all together. 

He remembers the book, a campfire outside Washington, and he Knows. It’s simple. Why didn’t he Know before? 

“Gerry?” 

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“Dunno. What kind?” 

“I’d like you to write something down.” He keeps his voice level, or tries, but it’s no easy thing. He feels that punch again, a bit like a shot of whiskey and a great deal more like electrocution. It will work. He used to be able to remember the sound of the page ripping, but now he finds he can only imagine what it might be like. Already he can barely picture the greying shape of a young man with a thin gown and bare feet across the fire from him in the state park, telling him everything in a quiet matter-of-fact voice. A different memory is supplanting it. The hunters had left him alone, and he’d read the information by himself, stopping whenever the light got too low to stoke the fire. He still had it somewhere, or had before the Eye: a thick, crumpled file of lined notebook paper, a bit water-stained and muddy from living in Herbert’s pack for upwards of four years. Densely written ballpoint, cramped handwriting with unconscious scribbles in the margins. All the details. 

Gerry Keay watches him, eyebrows still raised. “Go on.”

“I need you to write down for me everything you know about the powers. What they are, how many, how to...how to understand them for a complete beginner. Your best crash course. Put it all together and then I need you to track down either one of these two people, all right? Julia Montauk. Trevor Herbert.” He finds pen and paper in the nurse’s pockets and rips off a sheet to write the names down for Gerry, but he’s a smart guy. And he’s good at finding people. He’ll manage it all right. 

“Tell them to hold onto the information,” he says. “They don’t need to know what it is. In fact, maybe find a way to...” No, this is too complicated already. He’s in so far over his head, and who knows what further nudges will do to what he understands as the past. “You know what? Never mind. Too many variables. I’ll leave how much they should know up to you.”

Gerry takes the slip of paper and frowns at it for a minute. “And why am I doing this?”

Jon sighs. He’s beginning to catch the edge of that post-statement run-down feeling, but he can finish this. Has to. “So that I can tie up my loose ends.”

“And that’s it?”

“Tell them to give it to a man named Jonathan Sims. They don’t have to track him down, mind,” he adds, as he realizes what saying something like that would _ mean _ to a hunter. “Just that when they meet him, it’s his. There’s no hurry, tell them that.”

“Why don’t I just give it to this guy myself? Save us all a bit of run-around?”

Why do you think, he almost says, before remembering to choose his words carefully. “He works for people who...he...” He can’t think clearly anymore. His head is beginning to swim into another world, where this room is busy with machinery, fast figures crowding the bed so that he can barely see Gerard Keay at the center. It’s fading and not fast enough. 

He closes his eyes and pushes it away, looks up to see Gerry watching him with something like concern. 

“Fine. No worries. I’ve done plenty of things for Gertrude without knowing why.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I said don’t worry about it. I’ll get it done. Your man Sims, he’ll get his information.”

“Thank you,” Jon manages. “You take care of yourself, all right? Get out of the business. I know she’s done a lot for you, but take some time off. Recover. Stay safe. Okay?”

“Don’t know if I can,” Gerry says quietly. He’s staring at his hands, chipping a bit of paint off of his thumbnail. “Sort of tied up in it from the start, wasn’t I?”

“No more than the rest of us,” Jon says as he feels the room begin to fall away. He stands up; hopefully he won’t have confused the nurse too much with his detour. Another voice calls from his real body’s vicinity, high with worry. He ignores it until he’s finished here. “Just try for me, all right, will you?” 

The last he sees of Gerry Keay, he’s popping off a sarcastic salute, one of his silver rings flashing in the light.

And Jon goes home. 

***

Nothing feels different. _ Changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born _...nothing like that. He can’t even remember if Gerry Keay, this world’s Gerry Keay, is alive or dead. The issue slips from him when he tries to See it. Is it still in flux? Or has he divorced himself from reality just one step too far this time? He spends the afternoon napping fitfully for as long as he can manage. Martin asks him what happened, whether he’s okay, but he’s not able to say and eventually he drops the question. 

It’s only much later, as they’re heating dinner over the camp stove, that it really comes to an end. They’re on their last can of italian wedding, the spinach wilted and unpleasant but the meat still good, and meat is so hard to come by these days that it tastes like a blessing. He’s gotten better at eating real food lately, even though he’s not ever particularly hungry for it. Martin’s logic is that he’d better do it anyway, just in case one of these days they find a way to get him safely out of the Beholding. If he’s starving at the time then he’ll be much the worse for wear when that day finally comes, Martin says. He needs to keep up the behavior. 

And the soup doesn’t taste half bad, he has to admit. It’s hot and that’s enough tonight. He lets the plastic thermos lid warm his hands and watches Martin across the stove. His hair’s gotten so long that he’s started clipping bits of it back with bobby pins, and while he’s not very good yet at making it look like any kind of real _ style _, it’s...hopelessly sweet in its own messy way. He thinks that phrase to himself again. That’s Martin all over, really. Always was. 

Martin catches him looking and smiles over his own cup of soup. He never seems to mind the scrutiny. Small blessings. He takes a sip, and says, offhandedly, as if he’s just remembered something, “Oh, by the way.”

“Mm?”

“Meant to tell you. Completely forgot! You were doing your whole trance thing, and I meant to mention it this morning, it does factor into our plans, just that I’d got so busy, and I’m sorry, it-”

“Don’t worry,” he says quickly, otherwise the apologetic stammering will go on for another five minutes. He’s never gotten him out of the habit. Not sure why.

“Gerry called,” Martin says quickly. “Left a message, actually, said he was sorry not to catch us in person but he wanted to keep us, um, informed, you know? Said the shop had been broken into.”

“What?” He can say nothing else. His Knowing has not yet filled in all the blanks between what reality was and what it now is. 

“Yeah, you know he keeps an eye out and all. He’s been trying to figure out what was taken, but he’s not sure anything was. Thinks he might’ve caught them between the casing and the actual stealing.”

“Huh.” He tries to look as if he already knows what Martin’s talking about, but his focus is rapidly unravelling. Gerry...Gerry, who still owns the deed to his mother’s bookshop, who hung onto it for a few years after her death, didn’t keep it open exactly but operated as a sort of unofficial extended library. The Institute worked with him off and on, after he broke with Gertrude...he’d gone with her on a trip to America, but he’d had another health scare while they’d been over there...

“Pittsburgh,” he says aloud, and Martin blinks. 

“What about it?”

“Still there,” he says, but he Knows that this time no one died there, remembers that distinctly.

It was just a...just a stopping-place...they’d gone back home when they were able, the archivist and the book woman’s son, and they’d stopped working together afterward. He..._ remembers _ a conversation Gerry and he had once had about it, when he’d collected Gerry’s statement after Herbert and Julia had given him a huge volume of what they called ‘Keay’s work’ in America. A comprehensive discussion of the Powers. Smirk’s Fourteen. Theories. References. It was quite thorough. After that whole debacle he’d tracked him down to follow up on it. Gerry had said, _ oh, took you long enough _, and he hadn’t understood at the time what he’d meant...

“What?” Martin’s still looking at him, but he’s far away now. 

He hadn’t Known then, of course, that Gerry was still around. Had assumed he’d dropped off the map after his split with Gertrude. _ It was amicable _ , Gerry had told him, grinning. _ Like a divorce, but less romance, yeah _ ? He’d been in London the whole time, but Gertrude had died what, a year later, and of course when Jon had started at the archives he’d known nothing of that. He kept to himself. Only really interacted with the Institute’s library on occasion, and Elias was never one for volunteering useful connections. After a life like that, Jon remembers thinking when they’d met, he deserved the quiet...Gerry had asked...he’d asked if he’d _ been the one from the street _, and Jon hadn’t known what he was talking about...

“Jon!” 

It’s Martin. He’s waving a hand in front of Jon’s face, and he realizes he’s somehow spilled his soup all over the floor. Little bits of spinach are sticking to his shoes. “Right,” he says, “Gerry.”

“What about him? I thought you were going away again. _ God _.” 

“No, it’s - it’s all right,” he says. He feels a bit light-headed, and regrets the loss of the soup. But it’s just as likely that having it wouldn’t sustain him. He’s tired. But the past has caught up with him. At last. “No, sorry I missed it. What did his message say?”

“Oh, just that he wanted to keep us updated,” Martin says, not sitting back down but not exactly hovering either. His feet shuffle nervously. Jon fights the urge to tug on his pant cuff to make him stop and loses. Martin looks down, realizes what he’s doing, and smiles ruefully. “He doesn’t expect us to go find him, not in this, obviously, but he said he might work out a trip to us if we could come up with a safe enough location to meet in person.” 

“Does he..._ know _ what the past six months have been like?” Jon wonders absently. “We’ve got a hard enough time keeping track of ourselves.”

“The man moves in mysterious ways,” Martin says with a shrug. “I rung him back, I said sure, we’re always on the move anyway, we could work something out.”

“He’s planning to get back to us on it then?”

“He says so. He said, well, what he actually said was, ‘keep your ear to the ground yeah.’ ” Martin does a decent impression of that Keay cadence. 

“Good.” He nods, barely hearing himself, looks around in the bag for another can and finds some plain tomato soup. Not his favorite, but better than nothing. The last time they’d seen Gerry, in this world, the one he lives in now and didn’t this morning, it had been a few weeks before the opening of the Eye. He’d always been insistent that he wasn’t taking up a legacy or anything like that, keeping the shop and the books. Just that he was acting as...well, he said _ custodian _. Keeping an eye on things. And Jon has never mentioned his Herbert Theory of Longevity, although surely Gerry has already thought of it himself. He’s been the custodian of the Keay collection ever since he and Gertrude went their separate ways, and he’s been healthy since, never had a relapse. Maybe his doctors are right, and he’s lucky to have come through it all so cleanly. Or maybe it’s that Death likes hers to stay close to her, the better to choose them in her own time. 

Gerry, he knows, tries not to dwell on it. Someone has to do it, he always says, and that look will cross his face, the look Jon’s seen on so many of the faces of his friends. There was a better life somewhere that these people could be living, but after a while you adapted...

Then he would grin that sardonic grin of his and ask what volume it was that Martin needed, be careful with this one, it’s a nasty piece of work, yeah? And did Martin say he would still be available Thursday next for D&D? And things would continue as usual. As if the world had never changed.

***

What does it mean, that the world is different? The addition of Gerry to its ranks for longer than he’d originally belonged to them? Nothing, nothing much at all, really. The dance had still taken lives. The Eye had still opened, they had all been tricked and the world is infinitely different and damaged and he still feels that large parts of it are entirely his fault.

But Martin would say that wasn’t the point. That the point was that lives - theirs, others - had value. That at least one person had arguably enjoyed a better one because of something he’d done. Even if all he’d done was get in the way and make a nuisance of himself. Barely scraping out a living in a dystopian observation hellscape versus barely sustaining existence in the agonizing pages of a book that bound memories in skin? Obviously there was a difference, but...had he really improved things or just blundered into a way to assuage his own conscience, to feel for a moment as if he’d helped someone whether they wanted it or not? 

_ I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry _. He remembers this, from a conversation they have never had. The frogs in the dark of the trees, the cool night air of the woods, the fire between them and the mostly-solid form of a lost young man thinking in the moment before his leaving of a world in which people had nicknames for him. 

The point, maybe. 

And just as importantly, it is proof that _ things can be changed _. 

It will be good to see him again. 


End file.
